Local Legislative Professionalism

Although research on professionalism in state legislatures has been sub-stantial, professionalism research has ignored legislative bodies in local gov-ernment, such as city councils and school boards. Using detailed school district-level data and an original survey of school board members in 210 school districts in California, we develop measures of professionalism in the local government context. We then use these measures to examine which characteristics of school districts are associated with greater profes-sionalization. Consistent with findings in the state politics literature, we find that districts with greater resources and more heterogeneous environments exhibit higher degrees of professionalism than other districts. Keywords American politics, education, local politics, professionalism Substantial research has investigated legislative professionalism at the state and national levels. The literature, however, largely ignores professionalis